Home Fires

[Season 1]

Rating: TV14.Bitter rivals fight for control of the Women's Institute in a rural English town as it struggles with the onset of World War II. Separated from husbands, fathers, sons and brothers for years at a time, some permanently, they find themselves under extraordinary pressures in a rapidly fragmenting world.

...another wonderful Masterpiece ITV/PBS production, where do they get all these ideas, and the talent to put their productions together so well? You get right into this one, the ladies in the WI are the underpinning of the community when given half the chance, and their strong characters and struggles come through so well, one spends half the time laughing and the other wiping your eyes.....always totally engaged....we get glimpses of the landscape as well, Cheshire is so beautiful, always has been more on the posh rural side in British life, not exactly moneyed and certainly not the industrial north or midlands, but so accurately portrayed...there is a scene at the end of the final disk that just broke me down, and it was then that I fully noticed how engaged I was in the story....within seconds I put a hold on the second season, have to wait a while unfortunately....

If the main theme of the series has taken hold of you, you may want to borrow the soundtrack CD. The ethereal voices of Synergy Vocals in the main theme represent the women of the series. This is what composer Samuel Sim has to say about his music. "The lyrics represent the women who were left supporting the home front while their loved ones went off to fight. Consequently they are supposed to evoke a feeling of resilience and unity in the face of loss and tragedy. Although the world as they knew it is falling apart, they carried on fighting regardless. The lyrics are obscured by the fact that there are several different lines being sung at once, but that’s part of the point. Ultimately they found strength in their unity with others."

A lovely gem of nostalgia. I was in England during the war and can still remember the community spirit that enveloped the country at that time. The W.I. was the glue that held rural communities together and was far more than groups of women making pots of jam.
I believe the second series is just being shown on British TV. Hopefully, it will soon be picked up by PBS or TVO.

While this is a most enjoyable, well documented and well produced series, this set of six episodes only takes us as far as March 1940. The work undertaken by those left on the Home Front has not yet begun. If there is a next series and it moves this slowly it's going to take another five years to tell the complete story of the old men, women, boys and girls who endured life on the Home Front and kept the "Home Fires" burning. Based on Jambusters: The Remarkable Story by Julie Summers about the work done by the Women's Institute during WWII to feed the nation.

Typical BBC drama filled with fascinating characters, good humor, village intrigue, and a little romance and heartbreak. It shows the real-life contributions of British women during World War II as they devoted themselves to the war effort as best they could from the home front. Can't wait for Season 2!